World landmarks dimmed for Earth HourLONDON (AP) — Hundreds of world landmarks from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate to the Great Wall of China went dark Saturday, part of a global effort to highlight climate change. Earth Hour, held on the last Saturday of March every year, began as a Sydney-only event in 2007. The city’s iconic Harbor Bridge and Opera House were dimmed again this year. Australia is among the first countries to flick off the light switches each year; in New Zealand, Sk...

Pakistan: Gunmen kill 6 people, 1 a UN employeeQUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Gunmen killed six people in a pair of attacks in southwest Pakistan on Thursday, one of which targeted local employees of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, officials said. The gunmen opened fire on the U.N. staff as they were riding in a car through Baluchistan province’s Mastung district, killing two people, said police officer Rustam Khan. The two killed included a member of the group’s project sta...

Pope urges greater openings in vast Cuban MassHAVANA (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI demanded more freedom for the Catholic Church in communist-run Cuba and preached against “fanaticism” in an unusually political sermon Wednesday before hundreds of thousands at Revolution Plaza, with President Raul Castro in the front row. Before the pope’s departure, he met with the president’s brother, revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. Castro grilled the pontiff on changes in church liturgy and his role as sp...

Pope prays for freedom, ’renewal’ in CubaHAVANA (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI prayed for freedom and renewal “for the greater good of all Cubans” before the nation’s patron saint Tuesday, but the island’s communist leaders quickly rejected the Roman Catholic leader’s appeal for political change after five decades of one-party rule. The exchange came hours ahead of a 55-minute closed-door meeting with President Raul Castro on the pontiff’s second day on the island. Brief video feeds showed...

Pope to Mexico’s children: Be messengers of peaceGUANAJUATO, Mexico (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI reached out to the future of the church in Mexico on Saturday, telling a gathering of children to be messengers of peace in their often-violent country. The pope reserved his only public remarks of the day for a gathering of about 4,000 children and their parents massed in Peace Plaza in the city of Guanajuato, telling them that they are each a “gift of God to Mexico and the world.” Referring indirec...

Obama confronts nuke threat on N. Korea front lineOBSERVATION POST OUELLETTE, South Korea (AP) — President Barack Obama made a symbolic visit to the world’s most militarized border on Sunday, striding into the surreal Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea and telling U.S. forces stationed along the DMZ they serve on “freedom’s frontier.” Obama shook hands and spoke briefly in the dining hall at a U.S. military camp just outside the 2.5-mile-wide zone, then walked into the heavil...

Syria's Assad still in power after a bloody yearBEIRUT (AP) — As world leaders close ranks against Syrian leader Bashar Assad, the U.S. president summed up the popular wisdom during a recent White House press conference: “Ultimately, this dictator will fall.” That prediction may be premature. Regime forces have retaken the major opposition strongholds, the rebels are low on money and guns, and the U.N. has ruled out any military intervention of the type that tipped the scales against Libya’...

French standoff ends with suspect shot in the headTOULOUSE, France (AP) — In a dramatic end to a 32-hour standoff, a masked French SWAT team slipped into the apartment of an Islamist extremist Thursday, sparking a firefight that ended with the suspect jumping out the window and being fatally shot in the head. Mohamed Merah, 23, was wanted in the deaths of three French paratroopers, three Jewish schoolchildren and a rabbi — all killed since March 11 in what Merah reportedly told police was an ...

French hunt school killer, suspect neo-Nazi tiesTOULOUSE, France (AP) — Police searched southern France on Tuesday for an expert gunman suspected of fatally shooting seven people in the head at close range in attacks that may have been motivated by neo-Nazi ties or grudges against minorities. The shooter is suspected of carrying out three deadly attacks: leaving four people dead on Monday at a Jewish school in Toulouse, three of them young children; killing two French paratroopers and serio...

Egypt’s Coptic pope buried, Christians anxiousWADI NATROUN, Egypt (AP) — Pope Shenouda III, an giant figure for 40 years at the helm of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, was laid to rest on Tuesday in a desert monastery after a moving funeral Mass at a Cairo cathedral attended by tens of thousands. Shenouda’s death brought an outpouring of expressions of Muslim-Christian unity in this mainly Muslim and conservative Arab nation, but it may have done little to hide the alarm of Egypt’s Christ...

Syrian rebels outgunned, struggling for suppliesGORENTAS, Turkey (AP) — Syrian rebel commander Ahmad Mihbzt and his ragtag fighters grabbed their aging rifles to fight Syrian troops advancing on their village, but soon fled under a rain of exploding artillery shells. “We will fight until our last drop of blood,” Mihbzt declared a week later in this village across the Turkish border. “We just withdrew because we ran out of ammunition.” Like Mihbzt’s men, rebels across Syria fighting to toppl...

Strong, long 7.4 quake shakes Mexico CityMEXICO CITY (AP) — A strong 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit Mexico on Tuesday, shaking central and southern parts of the country, sending a pedestrian bridge crashing atop a transit bus and swaying high-rises in Mexico City. At least one building in the capital appeared on the verge of collapse. More than 60 homes were damaged near the epicenter in Ometepec in southern Guerrero state, though there were no reports of death or serious injury. Fear ...

Avalanche kills 5 foreign tourists in NorwayOSLO, Norway (AP) — Five people were killed and one person was dug out alive after Swiss and French skiers were buried by an avalanche Monday on Norway’s Arctic fringe. Rescuers located the victims through beacons from their radio transceivers, but only the first person they found survived, a Swiss man who was taken to a local hospital in stable condition. A 3,000-foot wall of snow came crashing down on the skiers on Sorbmegaisa mountain, 40 m...

Clashes rock Syrian capital amid insurgency fearsBEIRUT (AP) — Syrian rebels battled regime forces Monday in a heavily protected, upscale area of Damascus, activists said, in a sign that the country’s outgunned opposition is increasingly turning to insurgent tactics. At least three people were killed in the firefight, which was the most serious clash in the Syrian capital since the uprising began a year ago. The battle with machine guns and automatic rifles brought the country’s violent conf...

'Looking to kill': 4 slain at French
Jewish schoolTOULOUSE, France (AP) — A gunman on a motorbike opened fire Monday at a Jewish school, killing a rabbi and his two young sons as they waited for a bus, then chased down a 7-year-old girl, shooting her dead at point-blank range. It was the latest in a series of attacks on minorities that have raised fears of a racist killer on the loose. Authorities said the same weapon, a powerful .45-caliber handgun, was used in two other recent shootings in ...

Pope of Egypt’s Coptic Christian Church diesCAIRO, Egypt (AP) — Pope Shenouda III, the patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church who led Egypt’s Christian minority for 40 years during a time of increasing tensions with Muslims, died Saturday. He was 88. The state news agency MENA said Shenouda died Saturday after battling liver and lung problems for several years, and a doctor who treated him several years ago said he suffered from prostate cancer that had spread to his lungs. He died at ...

John Demjanjuk, convicted death camp guard, diesBERLIN (AP) — John Demjanjuk was convicted of being a low-ranking guard at the Sobibor death camp, but his 35-year fight on three continents to clear his name — a legal battle that had not yet ended when he died Saturday at age 91 — made him one of the best-known faces of Nazi prosecutions. The conviction of the retired Ohio autoworker in a Munich court in May on 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder, which was still being appealed, br...

Twin suicide blasts kill dozens in Syrian capitalDAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Two suicide bombers detonated cars packed with explosives in near-simultaneous attacks on heavily guarded intelligence and security buildings in the Syrian capital Damascus Saturday, killing at least 27 people. There have been a string of large-scale bombings against the regime in its stronghold of Damascus that suggest a dangerous, wild-card element in the year-old anti-government revolt. The regime blamed the oppositio...

Chavez makes energetic homecoming after surgeryCARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez held an energetic homecoming celebration on Saturday, rallying thousands of supporters from a balcony of the presidential palace after nearly three weeks in Cuba for cancer surgery. Chavez turned the event into a campaign rally, vowing to win re-election in the Oct. 7 presidential vote and demanding unity from his followers, denouncing a state governor who recently broke ranks with his party as a...

Pro-regime rally marks anniversary of uprising in SyriaBEIRUT (AP) — Thousands of Syrians rallied Thursday in Damascus in a display of loyalty to President Bashar Assad, waving flags under a slate gray sky to protest the anniversary of a rebellion the government says is driven by terrorists, gangsters and extremists. Outside the Syrian capital, however, tanks and snipers besieged opposition areas, including the southern city of Daraa where the uprising began a year ago, touched off by the arrest o...